The Democratic party has lost its soul: Clinton, Obama and the victory of Wall Street Democrats

A quick hit as we near the weekend. I thought you’d find this, about the soulless side of the Democratic party, a good and interesting read. (To jump to my Netroots Nation thoughts, click here.)

The piece is, in essence, about the neoliberal heart of the Democratic party, how it was born and grew. The author is Bill Curry. As the blurb says, he was:

White House counselor to President Clinton and a two-time Democratic nominee for governor of Connecticut. He is at work on a book on President Obama and the politics of populism.

Bet he doesn’t get invited to the next Clinton birthday party. Here’s Howie Klein on Curry (my paragraphing):

If you’re from Connecticut, you probably remember Bill Curry as a leader of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and a two-time nominee for governor. Most Americans who know who he is, though, know him for his role as a domestic policy advisor to Bill Clinton.

That said, let me introduce you to the piece. It’s decently long, so this is just a taste or two. If you like it, head on over. I know this is up the alley of at least some of you.

Curry casts his opening by noting the success of one man, Ralph Nader, single-handedly the father of the modern consumer movement, who worked mainly through Democrats of that era. Then, starting around 1978 or so, the era changed, along with the Democrats.

This isn’t about Nader; it’s about the Democrats:

My party has lost its soul: Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and the victory of Wall Street DemocratsA former Clinton aide on how Democrats lost their way chasing Wall Street cash, and new populism the party needs

… For nearly 30 years Nader largely abstained from electoral politics while turning out a steady stream of testimony and books. But his influence waned. By the late ’70s the linked forces of corporate and cultural reaction we memorialize as the Reagan Revolution were gathering force. In 1978 Nader lost a pivotal battle to establish a federal consumer protection agency as key Democrats, including Jimmy Carter, whom Nader had informally blessed in 1976, fled the field.

In Reagan’s epic 1980 sweep the GOP picked up 12 Senate seats, the biggest gain of the last 60 years for either party. Nader had done his best business with Democrats, especially the liberal lions of the Senate; men like Warren Magnuson, Gaylord Nelson, Birch Bayh and George McGovern, all swept out to sea in the Reagan riptide. In the House, a freshman Democrat from California, Tony Coelho, took over party fundraising. It’s arguable that Coehlo’s impact on his party was as great as Reagan’s on his. It is inarguable that Coehlo set Democrats on an identity-altering path toward ever closer ties to big business and, especially, Wall Street.

In 1985 moderate Democrats including Bill Clinton and Al Gore founded the Democratic Leadership Council, which proposed innovative policies while forging ever closer ties to business. Clinton would be the first Democratic presidential nominee since FDR and probably ever to raise more money than his Republican opponent. (Even Barry Goldwater outraised Lyndon Johnson.) In 2008 Obama took the torch passed to Clinton and became the first Democratic nominee to outraise a GOP opponent on Wall Street. His 2-to-1 spending advantage over John McCain broke a record Richard Nixon set in his drubbing of George McGovern.

Throughout the 1980s Nader watched as erstwhile Democratic allies vanished or fell into the welcoming arms of big business. By the mid-’90s the whole country was in a swoon over the new baby-faced titans of technology and global capital. If leading Democrats thought technology threatened anyone’s privacy or employment or that globalization threatened anyone’s wages, they kept it to themselves. In his contempt for oligarchs of any vintage and rejection of the economic and political democratization myths of the new technology Nader seemed an anachronism.

As Klein points out, if you’re looking for an original sinner, look at Tony Coehlo, named above.

But Clinton and Obama took the ball and ran with it:

In the late ’70s, deregulation fever swept the nation. Carter deregulated trucks and airlines; Reagan broke up Ma Bell, ending real oversight of phone companies. But those forays paled next to the assaults of the late ’90s. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 had solid Democratic backing as did the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999. The communications bill authorized a massive giveaway of public airwaves to big business and ended the ban on cross ownership of media. The resultant concentration of ownership hastened the rise of hate radio and demise of local news and public affairs programming across America. As for the “modernization” of financial services, suffice to say its effect proved even more devastating. Clinton signed and still defends both bills with seeming enthusiasm.

The Telecommunications Act subverted anti-trust principles traceable to Wilson. The financial services bill gutted Glass-Steagall, FDR’s historic banking reform. You’d think such reversals would spark intra-party debate but Democrats made barely a peep. Nader was a vocal critic of both bills. Democrats, he said, were betraying their heritage and, not incidentally, undoing his life’s work. No one wanted to hear it. When Democrats noticed him again in 2000 the only question they thought to ask was, what’s got into Ralph? Such is politics in the land of the lotus eaters.

The furor over Nader arose partly because issues of economic and political power had, like Nader himself, grown invisible to Democrats. As Democrats continued on the path that led from Coehlo to Clinton to Obama, issues attendant to race, culture and gender came to define them. Had they nominated a pro-lifer in 2000 and Gloria Steinem run as an independent it’s easy to imagine many who berated Nader supporting her. Postmortems would have cited the party’s abandonment of principle as a reason for its defeat. But Democrats hooked on corporate cash and consultants with long lists of corporate clients were less attuned to Nader’s issues.

Democrats today defend the triage liberalism of social service spending but limit their populism to hollow phrase mongering (fighting for working families, Main Street not Wall Street). The rank and file seem oblivious to the party’s long Wall Street tryst. Obama’s economic appointees are the most conservative of any Democratic president since Grover Cleveland but few Democrats seem to notice, or if they notice, to care.

Read the last sentence again:

Obama’s economic appointees are the most conservative of any Democratic president since Grover Cleveland but few Democrats seem to notice, or if they notice, to care.

That takes us through just the first section. Please, do read the rest. Here’s a tease for section two (my paragraphing):

There’s much talk lately of a “populist” revival but few can say what a populist is. … Meanwhile the populist revolt on the right persists. … Democrats aren’t even having a debate. Their one think tank, the Center for American Progress, serves their establishment. (Its founder, John Podesta, once Clinton’s chief of staff, is now counselor to Obama.) The last real primary challenge to a Democratic senator was in 2006 when Ned Lamont took on Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman.

They say the GOP picks presidents based on seniority. Two years out, Republicans seem headed for a bloody knife fight while Hillary Clinton may be headed for the most decorous, seniority-based succession in either party’s history. (If she loses this time it will be to herself.)

There’s a wonderful comparison of Barack Obama in the crisis of 2008 to FDR in 1933. Not that Obama did different things (he did), but that Obama saw different things. Both saw through Democrat’s eyes. What does that say about Obama-era Democrats?

I’ll add that Curry isn’t a doomist. He sees a great coalition within the party that’s unexpressed by its leaders:

If Democrats can’t break up with Obama or make up with Nader, they should do what they do best: take a poll. They would find that beneath all our conflicts lies a hidden consensus. It prizes higher ethics, lower taxes and better governance; community and privacy; family values and the First Amendment; economic as well as cultural diversity. Its potential coalition includes unions, small business, nonprofits, the professions, the economically embattled and all the marginalized and excluded. Such a coalition could reshape our politics, even our nation.

Here’s hoping.

Netroots Nation and the “professional left”

Which leads to some preliminary thoughts on Netroots Nation. I’ve been holding off my comments, but they’re coming. And I’m not the only one thinking these thoughts — or “havin’ them dreams” as Bob Dylan once wrote. Simply put, there are two kinds of “Democrat” — the kind that hates what Obama and Clinton (and next-Clinton) have done and will do to the country, and the kind that’s kinda sorta OK with that.

Yes, I know … Republicans. But if your argument is “Stop Republicans ‘cuz Evil Deeds” then you have to stop Democrats when they do evil deeds too — and with the same passion — not just go look for your next movement job once the last sorta-OK Dem took office with your help.

That passion does describe and infuse many “movement” progressive activists, but there are plenty it doesn’t seem to touch, except when they speak. For all the Warren Wing enthusiasm, there are many who will work for Hillary, then not work equally as hard to stop her once she gets power. As one writer said about this year’s Netroots Nation:

A more appropriate slogan for the event, at least for some attendees, might have been “I’m resigned to Hillary.”

Let’s say that differently. How can one be “Ready for Warren” and “Ready for Hillary” too? If you actually listen to Warren, you can’t, even if you’re Warren herself.

I’ll have more on Netroots Nation soon. I’m collecting not just my thoughts, but those of others as well. The soul of the article above touches the soul of that event, and modern “Democrats” should read this piece carefully, for the all-too-obvious reason.

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towerofbabel

“After 30+ years of betrayals, lies and actual crimes, it must be presumed that their loyal voters are either dumber than rocks or actually WANT things to be the way they are…”

This goes for Republican voters too. Divide and conquer, as they say.

harrymattachine

Situation normal since long before the 1980s. Gore Vidal quotes himself:

Q: Talk about the role of the opposition party, the Democrats.

Vidal: It isn’t an opposition party. I have been saying for
the last thousand years that the United States has only one party—the
property party. It’s the party of big corporations, the party of money.
It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican. –

some good observations in here.
Carter was the first real “triangulator”. JFK gave some on things like the CIA and viet nam… and didn’t live long enough to learn from his mistakes. LBJ gave us the “Great Society” but also escalated v-n foolishly. And he DID learn, but lacked the nads to undo it.
Carter started the last enforcement of Sherman, ironically ending effective oversight on telecoms. But he also recognized our energy problems and started to try to remedy them… although he had to give on other issues to get buy-in on that one. He and Volker also monetized the v-n debt which helped cause double-digit inflation which, in turn, helped get him unelected.
All Ds since have been shit… the more recent the shittier.
Your point about D voters is spot on, imo. I’d put it at probably 3/4 of those who vote D care about issues, but care far more about simply winning. The other 1/4 are too terrified of Rs to be able to function rationally, and vote D reflexively.
The D party, natch, wants it that way. The scarier they make their R opponent, the more they think the turnout will favor them. And up until 2014, they were probably correct. But very soon, the unbroken string of betrayals and actual crimes will be noticed by more and more. And they will suffer electorally.
Then they will probably react like the Rs did when they lost elections. They’ll become even MORE fundamental rightists trying to peel off R voters instead of winning with the 2/3 of the total electorate who yearn for someone who would actually represent them.

pvequalkt

it would be the ONLY D ticket possible that would encourage some of the disenfranchised to try it again one more time.
However, it would also strangle the Ds’ ability to raise the half-trillion they need to compete in all their races because the money would be violently averse to their stances on money issues. The party could never let that happen. And both, as loyal members in good standing would never torpedo their party’s chances at all those dollars and all those races.
And if they assuaged the money, then they’d lose all those potential voters because they’d be simply the next fascist elitist money whoring democrat ticket to continue to make things much worse… and THOSE disenfranchised voters would KNOW THIS.

So both will do their duty; show up where they can do some good; lie for their party; and the beat shall go on.

pvequalkt

to quote from “The Right Stuff”, “fuckin A, bubbah”.

Bill_Perdue

“Anyone who votes D is voting for MOS.”

That’s true for many Democrats including former members of the union misleadership, and the CPUSA and SP hiding in the swamp of Democrat politics. And it’s certainly true of DLC types and other rightists like Dixiecrats and those who deliberately choose political evil, pretending that the Democrats the lesser of two evils. They’re not lesser. When they’re in power they’re as bad as Republicans when they’re in power.

In the last election Obama got a bit over 1/3 of the eligible vote, Romney got a bit under 1/3 and the remainder of eligible voters voted for none of the above. In their tens of millions they rejected the electoral scam. The other 2/3 of voter, and some times it’s as low as 50%, do want change but keep voting for Democrats or
Republicans hoping against hope for change for good. They’re not going to get it. And that fact is beginning to sink in.

It’s up the left and the growing union left to provide mass movements to direct their desires for change in the kind of mass actions that can provide change and general strikes, on a state and local level and national industry-wide are the most likely form those mass movements will take especially in the fast food and big box sectors of the economy.

Our second goal has to be to provide an electoral outlet in terms of socialist or labor parties that can use elections to educate and organize.It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.” Eugene V. Debs

pvequalkt

coupla things:
words are cheap.
what did she actually, ya know… do?? nothing.
See, she was culling big checks from wall street in 2007 for her run. The banksters know that if a candidate “calls for” something, it doesn’t mean anything. If they push a viable bill, that might mean something.
Hillary didn’t DO shit. She couldn’t… and keep getting those big checks from banks and bob rubin’s cabal.

pvequalkt

Another fine effort from GP.

However, quoting Curry: “If Democrats can’t break up with Obama or make up with Nader, they should do what they do best: take a poll. …”
They HAVE. They DO take polls. The polls are unequivocal. The Ds COULD read them and act upon what THEIR (erstwhile) constituents want. Instead, they equivocate on how to betray their voters (to serve their big money masters) while fooling enough of them so they won’t lose elections.
After 30+ years of betrayals, lies and actual crimes, it must be presumed that their loyal voters are either dumber than rocks or actually WANT things to be the way they are… and to get worse. Cuz, there isn’t any excuse any longer for ignorance. Not after Obama.
Some D voters could be excused for thinking Clinton was an aberration… but after his second term of CFMA, GLBA, NAFTA, GATT, WTO, telecom reform, welfare reform, bob rubin… well, anyone who still thought Ds were on our side were definitely deluded. And THAT was 14 years ago now. We’ve had 6 years of WORSE than Clinton… and in many ways, WORSE than cheney/bush!
How would characterize the defect(s) required of a voter to continue to support democrats today?

pvequalkt

ok. I know GP’s focus here was economics and the symbiosis between wealth and democrats (and Rs, natch). But he easily could have focused on war, war crimes, torture, widening the wealth gap, destroying labor, doing nothing for anyone who can’t and doesn’t write them a 5 figure check… So thanks for pointing that out, again.
As this author points out, such has been fact since the early ’80s (I remember several prominent senate Ds colluding with business interests almost as soon as Reagan took the oath in ’81). Then you only need look at how Ds voted during the Reagan years. Then you need only look at how they voted and ADVOCATED once slick willie took office. Hillarycare was a klugey mess that tried to keep D voters interested while it empowered and enriched insurance and doctors. By obamneycare, it was all about the insurance/phrma lobby and very little about people and zero about actual health.
Then there’s the bankster depression, and the big fat nothing that Obama and his wall street admin has done about it/them.
Anyone who votes D is voting for MOS. By now, one must assume that they WANT the us to go down the crapper.

mtblaze

And yet I remember that Senator Hillary Clinton called for a 90 day moratorium on foreclosures and a freeze on adjustable mortgage rates. She also called for Henry Paulsen to approve 5 billion to help troubled homeowners until the underwater mortgages could be assessed and those people helped to get past the rough spots. All of his in December of 2007, long before anyone else even mentioned the plight of those homeowners. All to no avail, because of a recalcitrant Congress.

Butch1

” . . . Obama’s economic appointees are the most conservative of any Democratic president since Grover Cleveland but few Democrats seem to notice, or if they notice, to care. . . . ”

I care! When I saw him over looking qualified people in the Democratic Party and progressively leaning for these very conservative appointees, I could not believe he had betrayed us. How could I have missed all the signs of this deceiver, they were there in front of us, but we were starved for “hope and change” and after eight years of Dubya’s folly we would have believed anyone. I did and I fell for this flim-flam artist carnival barker who charmed everyone with his elegance. He essentially lied his way into office pretending to be a moderate democrat when all the while he was nothing more than a republican. He showed us his intentions once he entered office by his selections and when he began to deride his liberal base when situations went wrong and we complained about it to him.

He and many others in the Congress and the Senate in the Democratic Party have been purchased by the big businesses of Wall Street and their Lobbyists write many of the bills that become the laws which favor them. How many 1% er’s are in the House and Senate who represent those 1% on Wall Street? Quite a few. It’s obvious they do not represent us anymore.

The Democrats have moved too far to the right for my tastes and have betrayed our principals. When this president put Social Security on the chopping block during the debt ceiling negotiations I was livid and betrayed. He, Pelosi and Reid promised to protect Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and Veteran’s Benefits before the 2010 elections. Afterwards, it was back to business as usual and this president came up with a solution to “fix the debt” with the Chained-CPI, a euphemism for robbing senior citizens of their Social Security and Disabled Veterans of their benefits to pay down the debt! This was President Obama, a Democrat’s answer; attacking the old and weak and the disabled veterans who have served this country of their benefits whilst not taxing a dime to the rich. Does this sound like a Democrat of old or a Republican pretending to be what the Democrats used to stand for?

This whole party is beyond repair as far as I’m concerned. They’ve gotten rid of all the liberals, save a precious few and some of them aren’t even Democrats who speak the loudest for what we still stand for. ( e.g. Sen. Bernie Sanders I. – Vermont ) I quit my membership as a Democrat a few years ago and I’m now an Independent voter. There are more liberals in these parties that aren’t connected with Wall Street. Perhaps I’m a Pollyanna, but I can at least sleep at night knowing I’m not supporting any of these evil bought and paid for traitors who continue to lie to us and stab us in the back.

irmaagregg

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Indigo

I’m pretty sure we kinda knew that.

Ford Prefect

There are possibilities outside Washington. Not so, within the Beltway. That will be a much tougher nut to crack.

Bill_Perdue

Public opinion is undergoing huge changes. “United States: Working-class and left electoral politics back on the radar? – July 2014 — New Politics — The US political system, so highly polarised between conservative Republicans and moderate Democrats, has experienced in the last year some interesting changes on the left-hand margin of the national political scene.

From Bill de Blasio’s victory in the mayoral election in New York City, to Kshama Sawant’s winning of a city council seat in Seattle, from the late Chokwe Lumumba’s popularly based campaign in Jackson, Mississippi, to self-described socialist Bernie Sanders’ talk of a run for the presidency, something new appears to be happening.

Independent politics and socialist party campaigns, so long marginal to US political life and from discussion in the media, seem to be back on the radar again. This is all the more remarkable given our terrible election laws that make it so difficult in so many states to get parties and candidates on the ballot.”

Well, my point had more to do with popular opinion within the lower orders, not leadership. Leadership, as is demonstrated by their full-throated support for genocide in Gaza, is clearly on the wrong side. In NY, even the alleged third party WFP betrayed it’s own charter in endorsing Cuomo. A massive tell, that one.

But the extent to which they can operate that way has at least some connection to how the lower orders behave. I have too many Democratic friends who are basically paralyzed into accepting an indefensible status quo, because imaging other options is somehow unthinkable. They seem to account for a plurality in the Party and that’s big wedge. The party cannot move past the status quo this way. So things will continue to get worse until more people wake the (bleep) up.

I’ll feel better if Cuomo loses due to Democratic defections. I’ll feel much better if Teachout were to somehow win. That would be a massive opening, methinks.

Jolly D’Bugger

Might want to read this from the folks who brought you the Bush/Carlyle Group connection: washingtonexaminer.com/charge-clintons-turned-the-state-department-into-a-racket-to-line-their-own-pockets/article/2551448#

Bill_Perdue

Democrat politicians are the enemies of civil liberties, peace, unions and a fair standard of living for workers. They share that with Republicans.

There is no chance in hell that either party will ever be an agent for progress – they are agents of the rich and are all reactionaries. Kucinich, who supported Romneycare and Obamacare and who now ‘reports’ for Fox is the perfect example. Supporters of the Democrats who want change will have to look elsewhere to building mass movements for change and to labor and socialist groups who use elections to organize and educate.

Bill_Perdue

The politics of the Democrats are characterized by their continuous attacks on civil liberties and the Bill of Rights, their longstanding policies of initiating and supporting wars of imperial aggression, their union busting, their concerted efforts to gut the standard of living of workers, their homophobia and their racism against immigrant and imported workers.

Those who oppose those polices should be looking for other ways to change the system of rule of, by and for the rich because one thing is certain, change (for the better) will never come from the Republicans or the Democrats.

http://parkandbark.wordpress.com/ Houndentenor

This situation will not and cannot change so long as it costs so much to run for office and therefore both parties as well as most candidates are so reliant on a few billionaires and special interests to pay for their campaigns. What we have now is legalized bribery. If you talk to regular people from across the political spectrum they almost all acknowledge that neither party represents the interests of working people except for a few hot-button social issues (and even then they rarely actually do anything on those issues except use them to raise money and turn out voters). I think this is the main reason that voter turnout remains so low in the US compared to other countries. Most people don’t seem to think it makes any difference and while I get frustrated with that for most of them it really doesn’t.

Baal

You work to get your favorite candidate elected in the primary. Then you work to get your favorite candidate elected in the general election (if all goes well the same people but sometimes not always). The word “soul” as used here has no real meaning other than “I don’t agree with everything they did”*. Me either. By the standards being used here, then the party never had a “soul”, not if you consider any number of actions taken by Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter or Clinton. Taking all your toys and going home if your favorite candidate loses the primary is unlikely to be help matters much. *Even people don’t have souls, there is no real point in using magical terminology in adult conversations.

just_AC

Thanks, Gaius

As I’ve sais so before here – is there any possible hope of Getting Alan Grayson from Florida to run, even as maybe VP? He is the only political person out there that I could endorse. Watch his youtube videos. Sure he probably has some dirty underwear on his closeted skeletons, and I would love to see his standings on some of the issues, but he definitely needs to get his name expanding to the national arena. Wazrren/Grayson would be a hell of a ticket

Ford Prefect

The idea that either legacy party has a “soul” seems rather silly to me. I don’t see how a party that is objectively pro-genocide, for example, can be seen as possessing anything resembling a soul. Morally Bankrupt is more accurate.

Historically, I would say the Democratic Party started its long journey to bankruptcy with Jimmy Carter. An anti-labor southern conservative wasn’t really the best choice. But at least he was reasonably honest, something which no one since can even remotely claim. In any case, Carter was the beginning of the end of the New Deal Democratic Party and that is where I’d place the marker for its loss of soul. From Reagan onward, the Democrats have done nothing but ape the GOP in every way possible, especially as it applies to embracing corruption to an extent even Nixon would blush at seeing.

That said, the comments about NN haven’t been all that surprising. As it turns out, a large portion of the Democratic electorate are in fact relatively mindless Right-Wing Authoritarian Followers. They don’t care what Obama or Hillary or anyone else does, as long as Republicans are driven mad in the process. This is the mirror opposite of how Republicans think, of course. Glancing at the polls, it seems roughly half of Democratic voters fit into that category, give or take a few points. They don’t care about economics, environment, wars, corruption or even if people have access to clean drinking water. Even genocide isn’t a problem if Obama/Hillary says its not a problem. They only care that their team somehow manages to win once in a while. They don’t even care if their team loses because their team is so politically inept it doesn’t really care about winning. See Steve Israel, for starters: no one can make more money by losing so badly. These Democrats will be happy if the GOP has both houses of congress, as long as they have the White House. That way they can still complain about Republicans, even as their own party runs ever farther to the right.

The other group is well meaning, but perhaps not very realistic. Look at New York. Andrew Cuomo is totally corrupt and most people have understood that for a long time now. But the Democrats made sure there was no primary to speak of. Even the Working Families Stalking Horse Party endorsed him over Zephyr Teachout, their own candidate! Now, she has a real shot, thanks to the machinations of Hillary’s people (who’d have thought, eh?). But will liberals step up and do the obvious thing and depose the right-wing crook?

Probably not, but I’m holding out a little hope they will.

http://wicca.com/celtic/wicca/wicca.htm Colin

The Democrat and Republican parties remind me of that conversation the two priests had in the Exorcist.
Father Damien Karras: I think it might be helpful if I gave you some background on the different personalities Regan has manifested. So far, I’d say there seem to be three. She’s convinced…

Father Merrin: There is only one.

Indigo

I wasn’t aware the political parties had souls. And if there was a baptism, it was invalid anyhow. As my mother’s second cousin, one of the Rogers Clan, was renowned for saying, lo so many decades ago, “I don’t belong to an organized political party, I’m a Democrat!”

http://americablog.com magster

Obama’s legacy will be saved by the insane hatred of the GOP that precluded the adoption of the “grand bargain”.

http://musephotos.wordpress.com/ GarySFBCN

In my voting lifetime, the Democratic party lost it’s soul with Bill Clinton. While there was plenty to hate, “welfare reform” was the last straw for me.

That said, the socially inept misfit Nader was never going to win anything. When he dismissed gay rights (and I think abortion too) as being ‘genital politics’ I was done with him. I don’t care if he apologized 1000 times. Someone who was that removed from reality and was so flippant about issues that cause so much suffering is not fit for office. I question his humanity. There are other examples of Nader’s hypocrisy, including his being against unions for workers in non-profit organizations, including his own organization.

Replacing deeply flawed politicians with other deeply flawed politicians is not the answer. We should know that by now. And yet, people are so hungry for change they are willing to do that. I remember many of my progressive brothers and sisters getting excited about Ron Paul because of his anti-war statements. WTF was that about?

cambridgemac

Gaius P, thank you so much for posting this. I have been tearing my hair out since this all started under Carter. The media coverup – especially the coverup by the “liberal” media – has been so thorough. It is bracing and validating to read this. And informative. I was not familiar with – or forgot – Coelho.

dcinsider

This should spark quite the discussion!

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